Works for combined driving too! And post marathon parties at our campers and horse trailers are the best!
I have competed at a few different disciplines and I can say not all competitions for disciplines are equal in the eyes of the individual. I showed hunters for decades and I liked showing my horses, the actual business of getting to and being in the ring was fun. But being at an h/j show definitely lost its thrill after a while. For me I felt like it was a tad insular, people hung out mostly with their peeps from their barn, which was a lot different from when I first started out. That may be because you don’t have the history amongst competitors that we used to have because it was a lot of the same people, maybe too many people are there with a trainer/barn as part of a program and fewer just meeting the trainer at a show, maybe it’s because shows can be so much larger than ye olde days or all of the above… But it changed what I enjoyed about it (ymmv) so I moved on.
But I still love competition, I found my current disciplines meet my needs so the joy is back full time at horse shows.
If you don’t like competition, given the time and expense I cannot understand why anyone would do it. I think competing is for a certain type of personality, and square pegging that round hole is not a lot of fun! There’s way too many other ways to have fun with horses. But if you break it down and you like competition but you’re not happy competing, it might be the discipline or the place you’re competing at. And that’s not to say in my example that any one discipline is universally bad for all, it’s just that different disciplines may meet different people’s personalities better.
